The Thurmond Amendment Denies Housing Protections to People with Past Addiction Convictions, Often for Life
Along the tree-lined streets of Miami, Invisible People reporters caught up with a man named Edward, also known as Eddie, who had been homeless for an astonishing 30 years. Throughout the sobering conversation, Eddie described a lifelong battle of falling through the cracks in America’s failed system of homelessness, hopelessness, and poverty.
As a youth, Eddie was shuffled through a barrage of group homes, foster homes, and orphanages, and eventually, after a trail of broken promises, ended up on the streets. He came to Miami with the self-described hope of becoming a “productive member of society.”
While he once suffered from an addiction disorder, he has been sober for years, a nearly impossible feat for someone forced to endure inhumane living conditions for decades on end.
A Housing First program would be a lifeline for someone like Eddie, but the current administration prioritizes forced treatment plans and criminalizing tactics over evidence-based solutions such as housing. So, Eddie pays the price of living outside.
Shouldn’t there be safeguards from a life of homelessness?
Well, as it turns out, “Fair Housing” doesn’t mean the housing market has to be fair to everybody.
Obstacles to Safe Housing: How Millions of People Fall Through the Cracks
Housing discrimination can create a lifetime of homelessness for people wrongfully deemed by society as “unworthy” of having a stable place to call home.
In post-Pandemic America, this type of discrimination has reached record highs. The National Fair Housing Alliance estimates that millions of cases of housing discrimination take place every year, although many go unreported due to justifiable fears of retaliation.
Across the US political spectrum, laws favor landlords over tenants, and landlord retaliation can lead to a lifetime of hardship and possibly even homelessness.
The most common kinds of housing discrimination are bias against:
- Disabilities
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Color
- Gender
- Gender identity or expression
- Religion
The Fair Housing Act Can Protect Against Discrimination, But Not Everyone Qualifies
Housing discrimination is illegal in many instances and disliked in some cases, but it is also exceptionally difficult to prove.
To protect renters and homebuyers from illegal bias, the Fair Housing Act was drafted into law in 1968 and has since been amended multiple times. The Fair Housing Act, at its core, aims to protect prospective renters and homebuyers from harassment, intimidation, discrimination, steering, redlining, and outright housing denials that occur during the lending, renting, or sales process.
While the act itself has not been amended for decades, the FHEO guidelines, the rules under which the act is enforced, were altered significantly by the Trump Administration.
In a recent press release published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), prior FHEO enforcement was criticized as “strong-arming housing providers” by discouraging appraisal bias.
Incidentally, discouraging bias was supposed to be the point.
The new admin vows to “prioritize resources for cases with strong evidence of intentional discrimination.” In layman’s terms, that translates to more loopholes for landlords who discriminate.
Under the Thurmond Amendment, People with Previous Addiction Convictions Cannot Be Protected by the Fair Housing Act.
Further crippling the former addiction community is a little-known amendment called the Thurmond Amendment.
Named for the segregationist and Senator Strom Thurmond, who drafted it, this outdated amendment excludes people with previous addiction convictions from any protection under the Fair Housing Act whatsoever. This is a lifetime exclusion, regardless of how long ago the charge occurred or how minor it may have been.
“The Thurmond Amendment is a federal policy that makes it extremely difficult for people with prior drug convictions, especially drug distribution convictions, from receiving housing,” explained Daniel Fishbein of the Drug Policy Alliance in an exclusive discussion with Invisible People.
“This country has made significant investments in criminalizing homelessness. And, certainly, if we thought those investments would curb overdose deaths or curb homelessness, we would have seen the effects of those policies already,” he continued. “We need to make different investments as a country, and investments that prioritize public health, that prioritize people’s personal autonomy, and that prioritize community.”
The Thurmond Amendment has been quietly playing out in the background of our national landscape for close to 40 years. The Prison Policy Initiative estimates that it adversely impacts as many as 3 million former prison inmates, many of whom would otherwise qualify for increased security as a protected class. It disproportionately impacts people of color who are already statistically more likely to be victimized by the US system of mass incarceration.
The Thurmond Amendment is part of civil rights legislation, yet it is used in ways that disproportionately harm marginalized ethnic groups. No other group is so openly denied access to housing in this way.
Housing for All Must Come First. Talk to Your Representatives Today.
Fishbein acknowledges the intrinsic link between housing and recovery.
“So much of addiction recovery has to do with housing,” he said. “Employment, community, humanity, and purpose are statistically proven effective in reducing addiction and overdose deaths.”
The Trump Administration claims it wants to combat homelessness and addiction, yet it continues to cut programs that prioritize Housing First initiatives and support movements that increase housing discrimination.
The result is widespread and chronic homelessness. It’s millions of stories that echo Eddie’s and reflect decades of despair.
Tell your local representatives to close all the loopholes by making permanent affordable housing an irrevocable human right for all today.